Last Day in the South

First off, apologies for the lack of a blog post on Friday evening, there was a certain lack of internet at our hotel that evening.

                Friday morning we awoke to a cloudy and somewhat windy morning. The planned workout was 2x2km time trials/races, thus that is what we did. Fortunately for us, the wind was blowing from the start line towards the finish line, which gave us a nice tailwind push during the pieces. It also created rather large waves from about the start line to the finish line. Oh well, we got the pieces done and had a good workout. Admittedly, by the time we got back to the dock, we were all a little cold and wet.

                Before the second workout we found ourselves again at WalMart. This time around, we didn’t get any ‘talking to Americans’ style questions, however we did pick up a fairly large amount of ‘travel snacks’ as well as some Vanilla and Cherry Coke, and who could forget a little more Fat Tire Beer (needed to bring some back to share). Also there’s just the joy/entertainment of WalMart in the US, so much more awesome than the ones here in Canada.

                Soon enough it was back to the lake for a final row. The wind was still there, but had come down a bit from what it was in the morning. Because it was our last row, we went up the river beyond the start line for a nice cat 6. After being out on the water for about 75 minutes, it was time to call it quits because we needed to load the boats back onto the cars for the journey home. This time around, boat loading took considerably less time than before mainly because it wasn’t snowy and cold, and everyone was there.

                As it was our last dinner at the all you can eat buffet, there may have been a little bit of extra enthusiasm in the eating. This was heightened when one of the cafeteria workers came out and told us if we wanted we could have all the extra pizza they had because we were the last ones there and the cafeteria was closing for their reading week the next morning.  This made us all quite happy, particularly Jerome, who has been known for his feats of eating exceptional amounts of pizza.

                Shortly after dinner, the van driven by Mark and Dave left to drive overnight back to London, in order to be able to arrive on time for and be rested for a Swedish House Mafia concert in Toronto on Saturday night (which we are all kind of Jealous we couldn’t have gone to. The boats they had on the roof of their car were back at the boathouse when we got there to unload last night, so we believe that they made it safely back.

                We (my car) left Georgia at just after 4 am Saturday morning headed back to London. Unfortunately it was not such a starlight voyage through the Smokey mountains. It was a rather rainy, foggy and dark trip through the mountains. This made the first three hours of the drive slightly less fun than they could have been. And by slightly rainy and foggy I mean wipers on full speed, reduced driving speed and fog lights on. The early departure made the first few hours back on the interstate better driving because there was much less traffic than normal on the road. We arrived back at the boathouse around 6pm, and everyone was back at their homes by 7.

                Two hours later (9pm), we learned that Matt’s car was just crossing into Canada (an hour from London). This put us about 3-4 hours ahead of them, though they did leave Georgia an hour behind us; and then stopped at Waffle House, and Chipotle (ok we stopped there too, but who wouldn’t), and Denny’s, and for various additional gas stops. Anyway, everyone is home safe.

                This effectively concludes the Georgia Trip Blog for 2013, stay tuned over the next week or so though, I hope to post a summary video shortly – and I will try to make it better than our Harlem Shake video. Thanks for reading, hope it was enjoyable.